Last month, my husband and I traveled to the mountains in east Tennessee, emerging from cold grey Chicago into another dimension where the adorned mountains seemed to sing out loud, and the trees were decked in a million shades of tender green, lifting their limbs upward against a blue too deep to comprehend. The waters of the creek danced over the rocks. The woods, trail sides, and hills were carpeted in an explosion of color, millions of flowers that no one even planted. The beauty was so radical I wouldn’t have even been surprised if the animals could talk. The winter cold had been redeemed, the world turned right side up with a glimpse of the way things ought to be.
And in the midst of this wonder, I ran on asphalt painted with double yellow lines, designed, constructed and paved by the Army Corps of Engineers and a battalion of earth-moving machinery. This hard inanimate surface wound its way through a living, breathing, totally organic world so interdependent and fragile that the elimination of one species or a single degree throws it off balance, so intimately and intricately designed. It is all seamlessly woven into what we are able to recognize as beautiful. The best description is awe. And it appears every year. Right on time.
The road was engineered. Duh. Anyone could tell you that.
But this beauty… just happened? Always remember, reality reveals truth. Profound. Complex. And amazing.
The Mighty One, God the LORD,
speaks and summons the earth
from the rising of the sun to its setting.
Out of the perfection of beauty,
God shines forth.
Psalm 50.1-2
2 comments:
Excellent post, Karen. From your descriptions I can SEE the beauty. :) Wow. Yeah, that's always bothered me, too: The wildflowers just happened? Without a Master Designer?
I liked your sentence, "The beauty was so radical I wouldn't have even been surprised if the animals could talk." I think those kinds of thoughts, too. I was reading the "Writer's Almanac" today and noticed this comment by John Muir: "It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods...trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra...." (italics mine). See? You're in good company. ;)
Post a Comment